Frock Fridays: A Christmas Wedding

Last time I came to England, the airline lost my luggage in Heathrow and I wasn't reunited with it until a week after I'd returned to DC.  (I promise I'll stop bringing this up eventually, but the memory is still really aggravating!)  Because I was without - well, everything - for the duration of my stay, I took full advantage of Virgin's assurances that they'd reimburse me for any expenses incurred due to the mishap, and I bought myself a lovely blue dress from the Anthropologie on Regent's Street to wear to our friends' wedding in the Sussex countryside in place of the Coast dress I wear to most spring/summer weddings.  (You can see it in this post about my five-year college reunion, second from the left in the bottom row of photos.)

I was 95% confident that my luggage would be ready for me to collect on the other side of immigration at the airport this time around, but I did a little poking around the websites of some of my favorite British stores just in case I needed to quickly find a dress for the wedding we're attending tomorrow.  I had packed the gorgeous burgundy Azazie dress I'd worn to the Thanksgiving soirée a few weeks ago for the occasion, so I used that color as my guide to narrow my choices a bit.  Happily, I did find my suitcase on the baggage carousel and will wear the original dress, but I'm still loving these frocks for the season!

top row, left to right: Jigsaw, Phase Eight, L.K. Bennett
bottom row, left to right: Coast, Reiss, Boden, Hobbs 

One Year Anniversary

photo by Tarah Coonan

I've been super sappy on this blog recently, so I'll keep this post short and sweet!  Jon and I celebrated our wedding one year ago today surrounded by our nearest and dearest and, though the past 365 days have set us some unusual challenges, I've felt lucky to be his wife at every moment along the way.

This anniversary is a little less bittersweet than it might otherwise be (given that we're not together) because we were notified last week that Jon's been granted an interview date at the US Embassy in London.  Assuming everything goes well, he should have his visa by mid-September and will be moving over before the end of the month.  There's finally a light at the end of the tunnel!

In honor of that and of our anniversary, I wanted to relive a couple of elements of our ceremony here now: one of the readings we chose, read by Jon's cousin Rose, and a recording of a Handel duet, sung by two of our incredibly talented friends as we signed the register.  Sharing these very intimate pieces is the most appropriate way I can think of to thank you all for supporting Jon and me through this character-building year and for all of your encouragement as we prepare to truly begin our life together.  So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you!

The wedding was very much like other weddings, where the parties have no taste for finery or parade; and Mrs. Elton, from the particulars detailed by her husband, thought it all extremely shabby, and very inferior to her own.—"Very little white satin, very few lace veils; a most pitiful business!"—But, in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union.

- an excerpt from Emma by Jane Austen

Frock Fridays: English Garden Wedding

It goes without saying that I was delighted to be reunited with Jon, but the official reason I flew to England two weeks ago was to celebrate another love: our dear friends Tom and Auriol were getting married!

The wedding was held in beautiful East Sussex, where Tom grew up.  The Domesday Book records a church at the spot where Tom and Auriol exchanged rings, though the building in which we gathered last Saturday was rebuilt in the 19th century.  The churchyard was peaceful amongst the bustle of the village and looked out over the soft hills of the South Downs.  I had to step out a few times during the ceremony because I had a bad cold and the incense was a bit overwhelming and, as I sat on a bench on the grounds, I repeated the vows they'd pledged as a sort of mantra to calm my breathing:

With my body I honour you, all that I am I give to you, and all that I have I share with you.

Jon and I didn't use phrasing as delicately poetic at our own wedding, but it was a poignant reminder of what we'd promised each other nearly a year ago and of what we were working towards as we struggled through the visa process.

After the ceremony, we all hied ourselves to Tom's parents' garden, where Auriol had created the loveliest reception: bunting, pompoms, and hearts hung from the trees and giant lawn games were set up on one side of the marquee.  We feasted on a buffet that friends of the family had cooked, drank local beer, and enjoyed chocolates from nearby Brighton.  The weather was mostly gorgeous all afternoon, and it was simply wonderful to be amongst friends, cocooned in such steadfast love.

The outfit I'd originally planned to wear to the wedding was held hostage in my luggage - I now have my bag back, but I had to do some quick thinking and even quicker shopping while I was in London!  Jon and I dashed into the Anthropologie on Regent Street earlier in the week, and I have to give him credit for finding the dress I wore.  Most English shoe stores don't carry my size (a women's 11 in the States, which works out to a 9 in the UK and a 43 in Europe) so I searched online and found tallgirls.co.uk, which offered next-day delivery on these sandals.  The clutch was on sale at Accessorize, and I bought this necklace at the same to complete the outfit though I didn't wear it in the end because I was coughing too much to bear the thought of something around my throat.  Luckily, I had all of my real jewelry in a bag in my carryon, so I had earrings (similar to these) with me.  I was afraid I'd be too casual, but it was perfect for the relaxed atmosphere of the reception!

Suffolk Newlyweds

Despite an afterparty in the fabulous attic of our wedding venue that didn't die down until after 2am, Jon and I woke up early the morning after our wedding.  (Well, actually, I woke up early and convinced Jon that he was awake, too.)  With the whole hall asleep and the sun just beginning to rise, we snuck out for a walk around the grounds of Bruisyard... 

It was a magical hour, our first not as bride and groom but as newlyweds.  There's nowhere other than Suffolk I would have wanted to enjoy that feeling of peace and contentment.

Speaking of Suffolk, I'm over on Casey's blog today with some travel tips should you want to visit the east coast of England - do head over to True Colours to check out my favorites and suggestions.  (And if you came here from there, welcome!)

Churchyards, Cemeteries, and Celebrations of the Gifts We Are Given

If you're relatively new here, the following story will make a lot more sense after you read the first and second paragraphs, starting from under the image of the illuminated manuscript, of yesterday's post.  It will also help to know that Jon grew up in the Anglican tradition and was a tenor in his choir at school, so we share similar memories of sacred music and the rituals of liturgy.  (I hate preambles but sometimes they are necessary!)

On the third day of our honeymoon in Norfolk, after sailing out to see the seals and then enjoying a brisk coastal walk, we explored the little village of Stiffkey.  We stumbled on a gorgeous old church, parts of which date from the 15th century, and spent a glorious half hour wandering the grounds.  The cemetery was particularly moving; many of the gravestones had inscriptions from the 17th and 18th centuries.  An especially sad one marked the memory of a 21 year old woman who was buried there along with her infant - the stone read:

A loving Wife, a Mother dear,
A faithful Friend lies buried here;
Here days with me, was short and sweet
I hope in Heaven with her to meet.

It sounds morbid, but the churchyard was such a peaceful place.  The day was brilliantly sunny and you could hear only the birds in the trees - it was almost as it time paused there.  As we walked towards the gate to leave, Jon began singing a hymn under his breath:

O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.

At that moment, I could not have been more present, aware of and grateful for everything I had.  I was with my husband on our honeymoon, standing in a beautiful cemetery and gazing up at the church tower reaching towards a clear blue sky, and Jon knew exactly the perfect hymn for the occasion.  In that place, surrounded by those who had died centuries earlier, I felt like the luckiest girl in the world.

In a post from early November of last year, I wrote, "Today is All Saints' Day and tomorrow is All Souls' Day in the Anglican calendar, so it seems appropriate to remember and honor those who have gone before us. It's also a reminder that the responsibility of love is also a gift - it's an amazing blessing to have these people in our lives, to cherish them so deeply and to be held the same way. It's a gift in the same way that faith is a gift; I don't know how to put it into words, but, as I think about it, love and life and faith and trust and responsibility seem to bleed into each other more and more."

A year on, my belief in this idea has only strengthened and, while it seemed scary when I first published that post, now I find it comforting.  I hope that the husband who buried his young wife and baby in 1806 felt not scared but comforted as his family was interred in that quiet churchyard.  What gifts he must have had though he grieved for them!

linking up with Bonnie Rose for Travel Tuesdays

A Good Wife

photo by Tarah Coonan

What does it mean to be a good wife?

Unsurprisingly, given that Jon and I have physically been together for only six days out of the 67 since our wedding, I have no idea.  To be totally honest, though, it's actually not something I ever thought about until recently.  Does that automatically make me a bad wife?

I know that if I asked Jon what would make me a good wife, he'd look at me like I was being foolish.  "Being a good wife is the same thing as being a good person," he'd say, "only one who happens to be a woman and married."

That must be too simple.  I mean, right?  It can't be that easy.  So, in earlier drafts of this post, I made it harder, reading traditional Bible passages from wedding ceremonies and delving into Jewish midrashim and exploring evangelical perspectives on Proverbs 31 until I nearly threw my laptop across the room.  But none of those things are really relevant to me; my life is too secular.  Being a good wife isn't defined for me in relation to God.  It's defined in relation to all of the other roles I hold.  I'm a wife, yes, but I'm also a daughter and a sister and a friend and a college graduate (and the proud recipient of an MA that required me to parse medieval French on top of studying Latin, for crying out loud) and a fundraiser and a singer and, one day, I hope to also be a mother.  That sounds like a lot of things to be, when I write it all out.

I wonder if men feel they they have to juggle all of their identities, too.  They don't have any fewer - not the ones I know - but they don't seem to be plagued by the same questions, at least not to the extent that women do.  I wonder if they have to ask themselves what they need to do to be good husbands.  (I really like Deborah Spar and I do want to read her most recent book, Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection, but I can't imagine men feeling they have to tackle the issue of satisficing.)  A few weeks ago, my blog friend Julie published her own "The Good Wife" post; it's what inspired my suggestion that we use the topic as our prompt today.  She concluded,

What I’m getting at (if there’s anything to be gotten) is that, to [my husband]: all of these things are just chores to be done... but I feel like there’s some phantom paradigm that I’m not living up to. I’m supposed to be able to handle everything with grace, and more often than not, it’s more: close enough/kind of sweaty.

I, too, have felt that phantom since I started thinking about what it means to be a good wife.  But again, if I asked Jon if he expected me to be a good wife with grace, he'd laugh, as I bet Julie's husband would.  Grace is not my strong suit.  He knew that when he proposed to me.  He expects me to be a good wife just as I approach every other role I own: making things more complicated than they need to be while simultaneously trying to maintain order and sense with some cursing, a lot of coffee, and all the love in my heart.  It would definitely be kind of sweaty, and Jon wouldn't ask for anything more or less.

So maybe it is that simple.

I think I can work with that.

How about you, dear readers?

It's Official: We Got Married!

Our amazing wedding photographer, Tarah Coonan, sent us our official photos last week - I can't tell you how happy I was to get that email!  Jon and I got married on August 24 and I was back in the States less than a week later and, just like that, we slipped back into the now-normal routine of being in a long-distance relationship.  Nothing much has changed from a day-to-day standpoint, so it's easy to forget that we really did celebrate our wedding!  It's almost a shock to remember.  Sometimes I'll see a flash of gold as Jon gestures with his left hand on Skype or I'll refer to "my husband" in conversation with someone and it will hit me, but otherwise I have often felt like our marriage won't start until we're together again for good.

Happily, these photos put that silly idea in its place!  I looked through all 626 photos in the online album and, by the end, I had a pile of tissues next to me and my face hurt from smiling.  The pictures brought me right back to that wonderful day and I haven't left it since.

We've shared more than a year of Wedding Wednesday posts so I won't elaborate too much further on our choices for the day, but here are a few details that I'd left out before:

readings: Reprise (Ogden Nash), an excerpt from Emma (Jane Austen)
music: O Lovely Peace (Handel) sung by two of my best friends and accompanied by the Gainsborough Quartet, who provided all of the music for the ceremony
first dance: Somewhere Beyond the Sea (Bobby Darin), DJed by Giaco Bridgett

Of course, you're certainly welcome to ask any questions in the comments, dear readers, and I'll be happy to answer them!  Our wedding was so much more than I could have possibly imagined - it's been such a joy reliving all the memories with these photos.  I hope you enjoy this small selection as much as Jon and I do!

photographer: Tarah Coonan

venue: Bruisyard Hall

flowers: Love Blooms

caterers: The Movable Feast

cake: Vanilla Patisserie

bride's dress: Velma Lee (email me for contact info)

veil: Ciao Sposa

hair: John Olivers 

bridesmaids gowns: J.Crew

suits for the groom, groomsmen, and fathers: Moss Bros